


Staring at the Nothingness

by Ramzes



Series: Soaring High and Falling Hard [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Don't copy to another site, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 01:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20573864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramzes/pseuds/Ramzes
Summary: Shiera Seastar has spent her whole life the way she has wanted to. Now, she has to face something that she does not want to: Brynden Rivers is being sent to the Wall and she faces her future alone.





	Staring at the Nothingness

The Red Keep was sleeping . Even the servants had finished washing the halls after the last guests enjoying the new King’s hospitality had found their drunken way to their temporary chambers. It was too late even for night birds. The crescent of the moon was slowly making its way through the dark blue sky like it did every night, oblivious to the fact that everything had changed.

“I always thought it would be Maekar,” Shiera spoke without looking away from the bright half of a semi-circle.

“Is that so?” He sounded surprised, more than anything. “I never did.”

“Oh, I don’t mean I feared such a thing,” she said, trying to explain, but tonight, all her eloquence had left her. “I didn’t expect that he’d do anything. But I figured that if someone was to get rid of you, it would be him. He was never a great friend of yours.”

Brynden chuckled. “Aegon didn’t do anything. I was the one who sullied his name with my deceit, remember? It isn’t as if he had much choice if he wanted to preserve some honour.”

Shiera waved a hand. “Honour! I’m happy that I could never get what men meant when they spoke of honour. Making use of your deceit isn’t dishonourable but the very deceit was?”

He was silent and she finally turned to him. He had not stirred from the wall he had been leaning against when she had come to the window. The dishes still sat on their dinner table; he had barely eaten. Shiera hoped he would get hungry at some point, so the dishes would stay there all night long, but she suspected that perhaps he wouldn’t. After his stay in the black cells, his appetite had decreased even more.

Shiera supposed she should be grateful to Aegon for letting Brynden spend these last few days in her chambers but as she stared at the man she had shared her life with, she felt anything but gratitude. Brynden looked older, exhausted, plagued by pains that had not been there when he had been taken down. That those were not wounds from torture was of little comfort.

“Come here,” she urged, going back to bed; noticing that he no longer felt comfortable on his favourite soft couch, she had had the mattress changed with a firmer one.

“I heard that your Raven Teeth were coming with you,” she said when he laid down and took her in his arms.

“Yes. The fools have nothing better to do but die by freezing in this damned North,” he confirmed but Shiera heard the deep contentment in his voice, the hidden joy. It sting her with the feeling of unexpected loss, that he would need to hide his emotions from her. Of course, he did not hide them, exactly, no more than she did hers. But they did not give name to these emotions; all of a sudden, Shiera wished that they had had.

“Take care,” she said. “You never pay attention to keep your eyeball clean. Without me there, you’ll likely notice that it got dirty only when it gets infected. You should wash it with clean water and apply ointment three times a day. Promise me.”

He laughed. “Now, you’re sounding like a lady wife. Thank the gods that you never became one.” Laughter went out of his face and in the moonlight, his expression turned serious. “You were always the smarter one, Shiera. If you had accepted me, you would have paid for my transgression with me.”

_I’m not sure_, Shiera thought. _At the end, it doesn’t matter. _She had not wanted to belong to him, to anyone, she had avoided it, guarded herself against it – and what had this changed? Would her heart have bled more at the thought that he was leaving? Leaving in disgrace? Going away from her? Going, perhaps, to die in the cold desert? She had not wanted to be bound to him by the chains of law and she had failed to take into account the chains of heart. But she did not tell him this. If it helped him to think that she would live just as well without him, she would not take this comfort away from him. She wasn’t this ungrateful. He had stayed with her despite her conditions, her caprices, her infidelities. She owed him this much.

She was not Aegon who owed him his throne and was now sending him away for his honour – without giving up on the throne out of honour, of course!

“I’ll think of you,” she said simply and truthfully.

He held her tight.

“What are you going to do now, Shiera?” he asked. “Aegon doesn’t hold my deed against you. And you are a woman of means. You can easily stay here, at court.”

She hesitated, realizing that she had never thought of this before. But she knew that she could not stay here. She had directed her entire capacity to love at him, as maimed as it was, and he would no longer be there; she had read all the books, lived all the affairs, goaded all the men she had wanted into the emotions she had wanted. She had been a king’s darling and a Hand’s lover, as powerful as a queen and even more; she had been admired and scared of. A lover and an adulteress, a woman of knowledge and a novice – she had tasted it all. At the end, she had settled for kind of… domesticity but without him, the foundation would exist no longer. Stay here, where only the pale spectres of those she had loved and lost would attend on her steps? 

“You’re shivering,” Brynden noted and wrapped the covers around her – an echo of her helping him into the warm bathtub when he had been brought here, pale and stumbling, his eye weeping pus, straight from the black cells.

“Hold me,” she said and he did.

They might be old and tired now, but their constitution was as strong as ever. He had almost recovered in just a few days under her ministrations and now, she stopped shuddering in a few minutes. She did not draw back, however, and he stayed with his arms around her as well. Dark Sister gleamed in the corner, right in Shiera’s eyes, and reminded her that no matter how painful their parting would be, he would still have a life. A future, kind of. Certainty. For the first time in her life, she longed for some certainty as well and she clung to the man to whom she had always refused any certainty. How ironic that she, who had always wanted the thrill of love, did not even mind that he could hardly make love to her tonight. He was not this recovered.

“There are many places that you have yet to see, Shiera,” he said. “So many books yet to read. I appreciate your decision to stay with me, instead of going to see and find them; but now, you can.”

“It was not a decision,” Shiera whispered. She had gone on a journey or two after he became Aerys’ Hand; but the fact that he could not share this joy wither had soon landed her in Westeros forever. She did not like to relish these things without him and he could not come along.

Perhaps she had given him some certainty in return.

In the morning, they came to take him. He was waiting for them, clad in black, with Dark Sister on his hip. Shiera did not go out to see him off. She did not want to treat the Red Keep to the sight of her tears. She heard the door close and then her knees suddenly turned to water, the world imploded and darkened before her eyes and she collapsed on the floor.

And still, and still…

She lived. She still existed. Slowly, she started forcing herself to reread the books that had held her under their sway when she had been young. She read books that had never interested her before, like books on music and architecture. Soon, her old interest was rekindled. Books were magic that she had neglected for far too long indeed. And in a few weeks, she left her chambers to help the Queen Dowager in having her things ready for moving out. Aelinor looked at her without a hint of her onetime hostility. Her assuredness in her place at Maekar’s court had healed the fears of a lifetime and the treatment still held, although she had now lost her place in life, her companion in life – just like Shiera.

Young Daenaera Velaryon, Maekar’s granddaughter, was fluttering around, putting Aelinor’s shawls into a separate chest. Aelinor smiled when the girl gasped at the sight of a piece of creamy white velvet embroidered with huge turquoises. “Take it,” she said. “I’m giving it to you.”

“Oh but I really can’t…” the girl started and Aelinor laughed.

“Do you imagine I’m going to wear something like this ever again? It is for a young lady… and it suits your hair and eyes. Take it.”

Daenaera still hesitated so Aelinor changed the tactics. “I’m clearing my old things out. I don’t want to find myself heaped up with things I will no longer use. It’s a new life that awaits me and I only want to take what I really need and desire.”

“You must help me clear out my chests as well,” Shiera said suddenly, making her decision.

Aelinor looked at her and smiled. “So? Where are you going?”

“I’ve always wanted to see my mother’s land – Lys,” Shiera replied.

* * *

**The End**


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